The Elder Scrolls Online review - Page 2

Beyond the principle, there’s the practice. And in practice, Elder Scrolls Online’s questing content is a disaster.

Every MMO launch is often plagued with a few bugs that fall through the net of QA and public betas, but with TESO it’s an epidemic. NPCs and items often break altogether: not performing their scripted actions, become invisible or refuse to interact with you and some would just refuse to spawn at all. You’ll often see players huddled around the affected area, waiting for a miracle.

Fixing these problems as a player is ludicrous. Sometimes, you’ll find it’s a UI issue that can be reset via a simple slash command. But more often than not you would be forced to repeatedly log out and in again until you were slotted into an instance where the quest was still working. On some occasions I was lucky in just a couple of tries. In others I ended up giving up on playing for the night.

Quest bugs aren’t the only bugs. They’re just the most obviously visible. But they’re not the most frustrating.

For example: the game has a habit of forgetting that you upgraded your bank tab, and will revert to the standard size. With it, any items stored in the tabs would be lost forever.

For example: occasionally upgrading an item via crafting with a “100% success rate” will fail, destroying the item in the process.

For example: sending a cash on delivery mail to another player, when your mailbox is full results in the item being handed to the player, for free.

Since early access and the game’s release just under two weeks ago, there have been two small patches, but it’s barely dented the scale of the problems Elder Scrolls Online faces.

At level 10, you’ll unlock Elder Scrolls Online’s player versus player mode, where all three factions take part in a giant, open world royal rumble. You’re fighting to take and hold the Ruby Throne, centred in the Imperial City.

If your faction captures all the keeps surrounding the Imperial City, then their top ranked player dons the Emperor's clothes and gains some god-like powers for the duration. It’s a fun system which rewards good play, and everyone can fantasise about that dream of attaining it one day.

Being on a single map, there’s usually no more than one or two large battles taking place at any one time. The skirmishes themselves feel really smooth, and I never noticed a performance/server hitch spoiling the fun. It can be brilliantly atmospheric, thanks to judicious use of weather effects: I felt goosebumps as fog rolled in from the hills and the roar of thunder echoed across the battlefield.

The issue with PVP is a lack of progression. You earn experience for killing your opponents, taking keeps and completing bounties, but in very low quantities. Every hour I spent in Cyrodiil, I couldn’t help but feel I would've made ten times the progress with my character if I sticked to questing. This feels like a significant misstep. PvP in Elder Scrolls Online is good, but it feels like you’re punished for playing it.

What else is there to do outside of questing and PvP?

Dungeons are simple affairs that don’t offer much challenge. This could be remedied later on in the game as players get geared and experienced (I’ve heard good things from friends), but first impressions aren’t great. Bosses are tedious one note fights, that mostly revolve around a single mechanic. If you fail to jump through the required hoop, it will one shot you. Dungeons are also littered with first come, first served chests. Loot from them is not shared with your party. They will cause relentless arguments within your party: I’ve repeatedly seen players abandon their group mid-combat to claim the treasure.

Delves are smaller dungeons that are public, and not instanced. Many have quests associated with them, while others are there simply to be raided. All come with an end boss, some loot and achievement for completing them.

But they are inept. They are always overpopulated - which could be a side effect of the launch - and the end-bosses are being farmed by armies of bots, who appear to be using the (actually quite good) loot to fuel their gold-farming/selling sites. Getting credit for the kill on a delve boss is usually not worth the effort.

The open world is way more fun. Exploring it, and the gorgeous environments Zenimax have crafted, is a real pleasure. It really is a pretty game and runs well. On my three year old system (i7 2600k @ 4.4GHZ, GTX 580, 8GB of RAM) I managed to crank up the graphics to maximum with zero performance issues.

You are deftly rewarded for heading off the beaten path: discovering Sky Shards (stones that emit a blinding light) will award a skill point for every three you collect. Finding all 336 is quite the achievement.

Crafting in Elder Scrolls Online is an oddity. You can pick flowers, mine ore, chop wood, extract runes, capture butterflies, and then use the materials to improve your weapons and armour. There’s no need for gathering skills or equipment: every node is available to every player. That does to a bit of a bunfight for nodes, and I think that instancing the crafting nodes per player would have been a better option.

Upgrading your items is strange. You can upgrade items from normal, to legendary quality, but it’s based around a percent chance of success. Failure will destroy the item entirely. Your chance of success can be improved by collecting more of a required material, but these are rare drops. You can research specific affixes like ‘increased stamina’ or ‘deal X fire damage’, but again, researching destroys the initial item. It’s a grind, and a rather dreary one at that: it feels like a wasteful process, but the end rewards are exceptional. Crafted items are the best available, even better than looted ones.

The Elder Scrolls Online is frustrating. It has moments of sheer class, but they’re consistently tainted by bugs. I love the PvP, but it’s pointless playing when the rewards are so slim. I like the questing, but huge numbers of quests are simply broken. I love the world, and the lore, and some of the systems they have produced. But my enjoyment of them was undermined by poor design.

There is a contradiction at the heart of Elder Scrolls Online: the delicate balance between making a game for fans of the Elder Scrolls single player games, and making a game for MMO players. Those who like the single player games will enjoy exploring that world, but the subscription model will continue to bite. And it’s hard to get round the fact that you just one of many thousands of “chosen ones”.

For MMO players not particularly wedded to the Elder Scrolls lore, there are just many better made, better produced, and better designed MMOs available.

Zenimax have a lot of work ahead of them to turn TESO around.

5/10

MMOs are huge by nature, and it takes time to see everything they have to offer. I always usually give every MMO a run for its money by reaching the end-game before review, but for good reasons TESO’s pace is slower than most. Even with 30 hours of play time I hardly made a dent. I will continue to play TESO in my spare time in an attempt to reach the max level, and then some. If I feel that the review should be updated and/or changed, I will make additions based on my experiences.

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I didn't want this game to exist. My views are probably biased. But....

Did anyone seriously expect anything better? Honestly?

A straw poll I made up in my head has confirmed 94% of Skyrim/Oblivion/Morrowind players didnt want an MMO because we knew it would end up this way. I didnt want this game to exist as it means that as long as this heap of REDACTED exists, we will not have a new Elder Scrolls game. And because this game exists and is REDACTED, Washington Fat Cats will assume "Oh, it didn't do well, must mean they don't like the franchise.. *beep* Cynthia my dear, please cancel all Elder Scrolls projects until we get our cash back on this one."

I adore the Elder Scrolls games. Morrowind gave me my first ever " HOLY HELL?" moment when that wizard fell out of the sky. I felt that This story was made just for me. This world was special. It felt so, so personal like reading a Choose your own adventure book that you didnt know the title of. And that was the feeling that kept me coming back into the game time after time after time. The exact opposite of what an MMO is. MMO's are about shared, inclusive to all experiences and environments where you are encouraged to social network and relentlessly consume your way through all content. Like a Terminator Sponsored by Facebook. Nothing has the "Its just for me" feeling all other ES titles have and as a result, it totally betrays what makes ES special.

But why? Why would they do this? Why would they go back on the reason so many people bought the games? Why would they change it up? Its not like Skyrim didn't make them a shit load of money. Did they just get REDACTED greedy? Honestly, if they claim it was anything but that, I will REDACTED Zenimax HQ.

If it was a FTP MMO (Like Guild Wars 2) Nowhere near as much hate would radiate out onto them. But, Zenimax were all like "Screw You FTP games are awful, lol" Then, release this premium subscription based game without the basic functions FTP games already have like, a working Auction system (The bug of which they new about since the beta and seemingly didn't want to spend any money on fixing it, just hoping to ignore it until the game comes out) Im not evenn going to talk about the combat system which I covered in a previous post about beta impressions and wont change as I haven't played the release yet. They game, is REDACTED over everyone. It is a waste of money and I worry for Bethesda's future Having worked for Bioware briefly (I should elaborate, I temped in Galway Customer Services only) who went through a similar thing with TOR after the first month, I know that they will be panicking now and should announce Fallout 4 sharpish.

This is now the poster boy for failed AAA attempts at forcing a loved and venerated IP into the cynical MMO market, doing an awful job of it to boot. (And after The Old Republic, thats a huge statement for me to make and, a heartbreaking one too.)

Yeah maybe you do come off as a bit of an ass to the uninformed reader, I don't know. However, if you have either played the game or just read up on it through social media, you will see your opinions are really not that extreme. Tons of people are up in arms over this game, and not just because :NerdRage: but because there are just so many things wrong with this generic piece of crap.

Last I heard there were still no EU servers, and the huge money and item dupe is still wrecking the economy and game as well. Oh and the bank being wiped and so on, and so forth. Zenimax should have chosen a more transparent way of doing things. Look at like Grinding Gears Studious (Path of Exile), or Carbine Studios (Wildstar). They are extremely transparent, and the fans love them for it. I suppose it might not really be fair to name Wildstar as they haven't launched yet, but they're doing a helluva better job of customer service and appeasing the fans, and thereby building good will with their playerbase, than Zenimax does.

I could go on a huge rant like you, but I don't think I'd add much overall.

Who said you can't? Zenimax has said time and time again that this does not affect single player Elder Scrolls games anyway whatsoever. This is a completely different studio and the outcome of this game has nothing to do with its single player counterpart.

The success or lack of will not hinder future Elder Scrolls games either. If this game does not do well it will not take away the fact that Skyrim has sold a ton of copies. What is it 20 mil plus? There will be more Elder Scrolls.

Reality isn't subjective. Reality is reality and a opinion is just that.

Anyway I am guessing you have quoted the wrong post? Because what you quoted wasn't an opinion. It was me stating a fact that this game does not stop any single player Elder Scrolls game from happening because:

A. It is a different studio

B. It has been confirmed time and time again that there will be more SP Elder Scrolls games.

C. It's common sense considering that Skyrim sold over 20 million + copies and was one of the biggest games of 2011.

That's the reality of it. If someone wants to live in fantasy land and has convinced themselves that this game killed off future single player Elder Scrolls games that's their problem.

I, on the other hand was looking forward to it. Put up with all the bugs, bots, and glitches. Then this dupe happened. The way they are handling it just shows me that Zeni is not ready for the MMO world.

The game just released so we have no idea how it will do long term. The game has been doing fairly well review wise and in terms of boxed sales it looks to be a success. It was #1 or #2 in the UK not counting digital sales. How often is a PC game on top in the all format retail charts? Neither of us have a clue on how retention will be though. It can be a big success or it might be converted to a hybrid model (which by the way doesn't mean failure). SWTOR made EA $200 million last year with their hybrid model. So no matter what the haters say the game has been a success for EA.

I really don't care if the game becomes F2P as long as it has an optional sub fee and it's not like this game means the end of Elder Scrolls SP games. I and many others wanted a Elder Scrolls MMO. A lot MMO gamers are also sick of the endless F2P games. Not everything needs to be F2P. I quit GW2 partly because of its business model and how everything cool in that game requires money or endless grinding for gold because of the ridiculous gold to gems conversion rate.

Don't like it don't buy it it's as simple as that. But don't try and ruin other peoples fun by saying that it should never have existed. We all have different tastes and to me MMO's are the best genre. I love them and I love this game. My best gaming experiences come from MMO games and I met my gf thanks to SWTOR.

If someone doesn't like this game or MMO's in general that's cool no problem. But I hope the game is a success because:

A. I like it

B. I don't want to see people lose jobs

C. I don't get a kick out of seeing games fail like some people (NOTE: This is NOT directed at you. Just that when you go to sites like mmorpg.com there are people with no lives constantly rooting for certain games to fail. As if their very existence ruins their own personal lives).

Everything you said was invalidated after that sentence. This whole "people who don't like what I like are haters" thing needs to stop. Of course no one knows what it will do in the long term. Hell, the Tomb Radier reboot just made a profit a couple a months ago. If the game is bad now, then you say that it's bad now.

Also, how do you know 200 million is a success? You seem to forget how much was spent on that game. You seem to forget how much they are spending now on it. It's not running for free.

You know full well the type of people I am talking about. There is a difference between criticism and making it one of your life's goals to troll a game every chance you get and wish it to fail. SWTOR has been out for over 2 years and to this day when there is an article about a patch or whatever you see them with the "Lolz ToRtanic hahaha ToRtanic this game fails lolzzzz" comments. Take a look at mmorpg.com or massively.com. Hard to miss. How miserable does someone have to be that a games mere existence upsets them.

Look at the reaction here. I explain to Shriven that this games existence does not stop a single player Elder Scrolls from happening because it's made by a different studio and Zenimax said so themselves. I get dislikes for the post. There are people so vehemently against this game that they don't take kindly to facts and reality. They think any positive review is because the reviewer was paid off while a negative review is the truth.

I know 200 million in 2013 alone is a success because I have seen their financial report. EA is a publicly traded company and all you have to do is go to their site and find the reports. I visit MMO sites daily and they report on stuff like this. The biggest revenue drivers for EA were their digital and PC business. SWTOR was a big part of that.

I'm not forgetting the upkeep cost. But it doesn't take 200 million dollars a year to run an MMO. It's common sense. If the game wasn't generating a profit it would be run by a skeleton crew whose only job is to make sure the servers are running (Warhammer Online) until it's eventually shutdown.

What are you referring to? I didn't mention anything about any other format O.o

What I meant by 'just released' is that no one would know how an MMO does within its first month. The "this game is dead" arguments are pre-mature as well as the "this game is a massive success" arguments. None of us here know how the game will do.

PS: You are flat out wrong about SWTOR man. I don't know how you missed the constant "ToRtanic" comments and people constantly trashing it even though they didn't play it or stopped playing it. Every MMO gets the "WoW killer" label and it is because of other gamers not the developers. Wildstar is next on this list.

And the fact is the game was doing just fine after its first month population wise. Not all servers were but a large number of them were doing very well. It was after the third month or so that it became a ghost town. In its first two payed months they had over a million people who payed the $15 dollars and those were numbers given to investors. They could not lie on those numbers because the company would pay a hefty fine and heads would have rolled. It is illegal to do so and the claims are always investigated. The drop off came later then some games but yes it happened and in a massive way. I literally saw 0 people on many of the planets.

I can't believe that all those bugs are still there. It was a plague in the beta, but naturally I thought that would be fixed in the final release. Especially since people were talking about how these bug were already fixed on the press server yadda yadda.

It's absolutely bewildering that they would release the game in such a state - even for Bethesda and an Elder Scrolls game.

The most common question in the beta chat was: "Is quest xyz bugged?" At which point I routinely said to myself, "better ask which quests aren't".

They released it to soon far too many bugs for people to actually enjoy it. I cancelled my subscription after reaching Veteran Rank levels there is nothing to do at certain hours of the day/Night off peak. I can’t progress further due to main quest bugs ‘The Final Assault’.

I've been having a brillinat time with ESO, and the butthurt exuded by this reviewer is a case in point of bad luck.

I can see if you have given the score you have, due to the problems described.... if I had those problems too; I'd be miffed!! But because I haven't (not to say, there haven't been a few bugs here and there for me), I can't see how this review is fair to put to the public, as the vast majority of people haven't had the problems you describe.

At worst, I would give this game a 80 - and I will happily subscribe to it for the foreseeable future, as it's 1) A great TES game 2) The best PvP in any MMO ever IMO 3) A gritty adult world, not like cartoony Wildstar or JRPG heavy FFXIV.

Also regarding people spouting off stuff in the comments... If you haven't played it, don't comment on the quality of the product people.. it just makes you look ignorant. Try before you lie.

But: Reviews are subjective and based entirely on the reviewer's experience.

You've not experienced bugs, or if you have they haven't affected your play time.

Nick, however did. And as Nick is a games journalist and plays games with a critical eye, these types of bugs stand out to him and can cause him to mark the game down.

As for your points:

1.) Again, glad you enjoyed it dude!

2.) PVP isn't everyone's game, it is a facet. Good to hear you think its good and polished, actually, even if you state it as opinion.

3.) Setting and art style are totally subjective. Personally, TESO's art style is good. But samey since Oblivion. Honestly though? I'm tired of WoW's style, and I think Wildstar's, while similar, takes enough away from it to stand on its own.

Still though, at the end of the day, if you enjoy the game, don't let internet commenters stop you from enjoying it.

"I played it for just over 30 hours, reaching level 16 (of 50) and the third zone in my faction's territory."

Don't take this the wrong way but level 16 is just not enough to properly review an MMO. Level 16 in this game is nothing.

Lowest score yet and the game has been doing quite well review wise. Maybe you can do a follow up once all the bugs are gone so you can check out the latter stages of the game because in my experience it gets better and better.

The game has bugs but they've been patching them out quite consistently and my own personal experience is nowhere near yours in terms of bug amount. Skyrim was a far, far more broken game from my own experience yet the game won countless GOTY awards and received a torrent of 10/10's. It was a miserable experience on the PS3 in particular but no one seemed to care.

Oh well, sorry you didn't like it. It's been hitting all the right notes for me and it has become one of my favorite MMO games. It's just very absorbing and I get sucked into it. But hey different tastes =)

With this, FFXIV, and soon Wildstar I am going to have too many games to play lol.

Thanks for the feedback. I know exactly what you mean by that sentiment. The majority of content in MMOs is actually found in the end-game, and I do my best to reach that content before doing final verdicts for reviews.

The pace in TESO is slow naturally, and that's a good thing: It shouldn't be a rush to the end like past MMOs encouraged.

However, if an MMO consistently hampers my progress and enjoyment with bug after bug after bug, I'm not having fun and it's inexcusable. I'm simply not going to be paying a subscription for that experience when there's better things I can do with my time.

At the end of the day if I don't get hooked on an MMO by the 30th hour, something is wrong and there's no excuse: it's already failed. I shouldn't have to "bear with it" or "knuckle down" to see the good stuff 150 hours in. That's not how it works.

That said, I do believe there's a lot of room to improve with TESO. Zenimax have a huge amount of work cut out for them, especially now with the dupe bug running amok in the economy. As I said at the bottom of the review I'll be revisiting the game after some considerable headway has been made.

I wholeheartedly believe that this can develop into a good MMO, but right now that's just not the case.

I completely understand and asking you to bear with it would not be fair. I think the severity of the bugs depends on your faction as well. Some areas seem to be more polished than others. I'm in the Daggerfall Covenant and while I have experienced annoying bugs that stopped me from completing quests it wasn't that frequent. It looks like it is worse for the Aldmeri Dominion judging by your experience.

I'm a bit divided on the release date. I look at it two ways. One is it should have been delayed to make a more polished experience. But the other side of me says, well I wouldn't be playing it right now if it was. I'm in no way advocating buggy games and it's always a shame to see games brought down by bugs.

I wholeheartedly agree that the pace of the game is a good thing. It's why I feel so absorbed in the world, environments, story, etc.

I hope the game is a success so they can keep improving upon it. I've been having a great time and I am addicted to MMO games in general lol.

Yeah it doesn't bother me. I just find it amusing that people can be so hostile towards a game that any bit of positivity is seen as the person either being an employee or in the developers pocket.

It's been about a month and the same people in various forums are continuing to troll the game. When did games bring out this sort of hostility? Don't like something then ignore it. Wasting time trolling forums and trying to annoy people who like it is pretty damn sad.

Just to make myself clear what I mean by "trolling forums" are the unproductive posts that have no value whatsoever. The "Lolz this game is dead in a few months." "Lol F2P in less then a year." Legitimate criticism is always welcome and SHOULD be given.

I stopped reading you review when you stated this "that has completely annihilated the game’s economy." That is nothing but conjecture. It is impossible to tell if 10 people did it or 1000 people did it. There is no way to tell if it "annihilated" the game's economy. You just went off what other people said, which no facts which a reviewer shouldn't be doing. Please draw your own conclusions, because it is really hard to take the review seriously after that statement.

Honestly, this was one or the poorer reviews I have seen for an MMO. You didn't even get to do the second set of dungeons. Now I understand if that were the case for a player, but you as a reviewer should at least try to play an MMO more to see if it grows on you. This isn't a single player game it is a game built to last for years.

Yes it was brought down, so that they could fix the issue which they did. GW2, FFXIV and similar issues around launch and they had to bring down the AH and banks due to it. But you wouldn't see nonsense like "it annihilated the game's economy". There is no way too tell.

Most of the prices on items has stated the same. Motiff's and other rare items price has not dropped. Illegal Gold Sellers are still selling gold for the same amount. A review can't make totally false statements like that, based mostly on hearsay.

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